13 Best Songs of the Week: Elbow, Doves, Saint Etienne, Squid, and More
Nov 15, 2024
Welcome to the 37th Songs of the Week of 2024. We didn’t do a Songs of the Week last week because we were still reeling from the election results and also artists, labels, and publicists were smart enough not to release too many songs last week. This week’s list thus covers the last two weeks and having said all that, the Top 2 songs were actually released last week (and are both bands from Manchester, England). We’re also partying like it’s 2001, as the Top 3 artists this week were all going strong in the early 2000s.
This week Andy Von Pip, Matt the Raven, Scotty Dransfield, and Stephen Humpries helped me decide what should make the list. We considered over 30 songs and narrowed it down to a Top 13.
Issue 73 is out now. It features Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya on the two covers and can be bought from us directly here.
To help you sort through the multitude of fresh songs released in the last two weeks, we have picked the 13 best the last 14 days had to offer, followed by some honorable mentions. Check out the full list below. By Mark Redfern
1. Elbow: “Adriana Again”
Elbow released a new album, AUDIO VERTIGO, in March via Polydor/Geffen. Last week they returned with a brand new single, “Adrianna Again,” which is said to be from a yet to be officially announced new EP due out next year. The single is accompanied by a cheeky music video, as it features a completely different band performing the song. The band in question is Novacane, who are a new band also from Manchester.
Last week, Manchester-based trio Doves announced a new album, Constellations For the Lonely, and shared a new song from it, “Renegade,” via a music video. Constellations For the Lonely is due out on February 14, 2025 via EMI North. Hingston Studio directed the “Renegade” video. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork here.
Constellations For the Lonely is the band’s sixth album and follows 2020’s The Universal Want, which was their first album in 11 years after an eight-year hiatus. The band launched writing and recording sessions for the new album as early as 2020.
Doves is Jimi Goodwin (lead vocals, bass) and brothers Andy Williams (drums, vocals) and Jez Williams (guitar, vocals).
The band wrote, recorded, and produced the album in Greater Manchester, North Wales, and Cheshire. Long-term collaborator Dan Austin contributed additional production.
Andy Williams had this to say in a press release: “Looking at everyone’s lives over recent years, and considering the news at the moment, ‘Renegade’ feels a lot more loaded in retrospect. We wanted to go for a dystopian feel, thinking about Manchester itself over the next century or so. A totally imaginary thing… Blade Runner set in our home city.”
Doves have released five albums: 2000’s Lost Souls, 2002’s The Last Broadcast, 2005’s Some Cities, 2009’s Kingdom of Rust, and 2020’s The Universal Want.
We go way back with Doves, they were interviewed about Lost Souls in our very first print issue in 2001 and we have covered every album since.
3. Saint Etienne: “Half Life”
This week, British indie-pop trio Saint Etienne announced a new album, The Night, and shared its lead single, “Half Life.”The Night is due out December 13 via Heavenly. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork here.
The Night is intended to be an immersive album listened to in one sitting. A press release describes the album like so: “The Night delivers an ambient escape from the chaos of daily life, capturing the essence of the after-hours. The album takes listeners through layered tranquility, offering calm to restless minds and a gentle respite from modern life’s relentless pace.”
Saint Etienne produced The Night in collaboration with composer and producer Augustin Bousfield. They recorded it from January to August 2024 in two locations in Saltaire and Hove. The album follows 2021’s I’ve Been Trying to Tell You.
The band’s Pete Wiggs had this to say about the album in a press release: “It was great to all be in the same studio together again up at Gus’s in Bradford, we realized that it had been several years since we’d actually done that, sprawling out on the carpet, mugs of coffee in hand, sheets of lyrics and half ideas for titles lying around us.
“We wanted to continue the mellow and spacey mood of the last album, perhaps even double down on it, but it’s a very different album, not based on samples; songs, moods and spoken pieces drift in and out whilst rain pours down outside. It’s the kind of record I like to listen to in the dark or with my eyes closed.
“‘Half Light’ is about the edge of night, the last rays of the sun flickering through the branches of trees, communing with nature and seeing things that might not be there.”
Saint Etienne’s singer Sarah Cracknell says: “It was so good to be back in the studio together after recording the last album remotely. One of my favorite songs on the record is ‘Preflyte,’ it made me cry when I sang it for the first time.”
The band’s Bob Stanley adds: “We wanted The Night to be a calming album, warm and serene, but at the same time we wanted to create something gorgeous and dense.
“We were trying to find the state that’s between being awake and asleep, that dream space, with half forgotten thoughts drifting in, bits of TV dialogue, place names, streets, or football grounds you’ve never even been to. You feel very receptive to sound and half-covered memories when you’re in that state.
“Rain noise runs right through it. It was designed to gently wash away the stuff in your head that keeps you awake at 2am.
“I think The Night sounds really three-dimensional. A lot of that is down to Gus Bousfield who played the guitars and did a wonderful production job. Recording it in his studio, with so much light and space, has helped to shape it too. The three of us brought in our own songs, but lyrically we were all in tune with each other without having to swap notes first.
“You could think of it as one continuous, single track. It’s definitely a headphone album.”
This week, British experimental post-punk five-piece Squid announced a new album, Cowards, and shared its lead single, album opener “Crispy Skin,” via a music video. They have also announced some tour dates. Cowards is due out February 7, 2025 via Warp. Takashi Ito directed the “Crispy Skin” video. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as the tour dates, here.
Cowards is Squid’s third album and the follow-up to 2023’s O Monolith and 2001’s debut album, Bright Green Field. Squid features Louis Borlase, Ollie Judge, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivell, and Anton Pearson.
Cowards was recorded at Church Studios in Crouch End, London with Mercury prize winning producer Marta Salogni and Grace Banks. Longtime collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums, provided additional production. John McEntire (of Tortoise) mixed the album and Heba Kadry mastered it.
Judge had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘Crispy Skin’ was lyrically inspired by a dystopian novel Tender Is The Flesh I read where cannibalism becomes the societal norm and humans are manufactured and sold in supermarkets. I think when most people read books like these they picture themselves as the sort of person that would take the moral high-ground within these narratives. The track was written about how the reality of having a moral-compass in these stories of desperation and horror would be extremely difficult. If I was actually in that world, I probably would be the coward in this instance.”
Takashi Ito, whose video for the song is an adaptation of his award-winning experimental 1995 short film Zone, had this to say about the video: “A film about a man without a face. His arms and legs bound with ropes, still without even a quiver in a white room. This man, enwrapped in wild delusions, is also a reconstruction of myself. A series of unusual scenes in this room that expresses what lies inside me. I tried to create a connection between memories, nightmares and violent images.”
Of the new album, Borlase says: “We were thinking of an album of great songwriting. Simple ideas that resonate in a very different way to O Monolith, which was dense and complex.”
Judge adds: “Touring fed into this record in a way that I didn’t initially realize. Every song has a specific place anchored to it, places that all five of us have visited together, like New York, Tokyo, and Eastern Europe.”
In January, 2024 Squid shared a new song, “Fugue (Bin Song),” which was recorded during the O Monolith sessions.
This week, British shoegazers bdrmm announced a new album, Microtonic, and shared its lead single, “Half Life.”Microtonic is due out February 28, 2025 via Rock Action. Check out the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as the band’s upcoming tour dates, here.
Vocalist and guitarist Ryan Smith had this to say about the new single in a press release: “The themes surrounding ‘John on the Ceiling’ are that of confusion and doubt. When something ends and another starts, you lure yourself into a false sense of security that the mistakes made won’t happen again. This happens over and over until you are paralyzed in limbo. Can people ever truly change?”
Microtonic is the Hull-based band’s third album and the follow-up to 2023’s I Don’t Know. The new album features Sydney Minsky Sargeant of Working Men’s Club and Olivesque of Nightbus.
Smith had this to add about the album: “I felt very constrained writing a certain type of music to fit the genre [we were known for] but something lifted and I felt more free to create what I want. And what I seem to be doing at the moment is a lot of electronic music—taking influence from different spans of electronica, from dance music to ambient and more experimental sources.”
Bdrmm is Ryan Smith (guitar, vocals), Jordan Smith (bass, synth and vocals), Conor Murray (drums), and Joe Vickers (guitar).
